Apistogramma cacatuoides puffing?

[jamminnewt]

Hi !

I'm new. I bought two Apistogramma cacatuoides, dwarf cichlid rams five days ago. I have very hard water and 7.5 pH so this week I've been working on getting the water to what they need (stupid boys at the petstore told me they were easy fish..when I got home I looked them up and saw that they need very specific care). I did a partial water change (with Reverse Osmosis water) which relaxed them some, and just started adding some pH -lowering salts. I'm going to keep working them down with more R.O. water every week until they are in their comfortable range.

My question is this, today I was looking in on them and I noticed that one is puffing. His gills appear kind of opalescent today, swollen, and he is taking huge gaping gulps of the water. Is this due to the hardness? Should I remove him to a small 85% R.O. water tank, or just keep working the whole tank down slowly? I don't want him to go into shock.

I read that they like wood and rocks to hide under so I bought a chunk of Malaysian driftwood for them which is leaching now. Please let me know if my fish sounds ill or if this puffy thing is normal. Thanks!
Any other advice would be appreciated.

 

[beleg]

Please make sure you don't make sudden changes in pH or hardness or the water suddenly. That stresses the fish too much.

 

[fishgeek]

check you nitrate levels too they dont like that

greying and thickening of the gill occurs when something is irritating them, prehaps the chemicals you are using, prehaps other infection/parasitism they are suffering

are you able to see any other changes
are he fish feeding
what are the actual water readings

andrew

 

[jamminnewt]

The water readings I got were pH 7.6 (which is the same as before) and ammonia 0.25 ppm. The ammonia has gone up. Do you think it was the pH chemicals that irritated him? They did seem fine before I added them. The bottle says to use 1/8 tsp for 10gallons once a day until desired pH is reached.

The "puffing" one has lost a lot of color and is very white. I can see blue and pink irridescent dots in the fins though and those weren't visible before. He is just sitting on the bottom. I have not seem him eat. For a bit he seemed to be trying to break the surface of the water for some air, he's given up now.

Please let me know if I can make him comfortable again. I'm not changing any water/chemicals today and hopefully that will give him time to adjust. Thanks for the help.

 

[KenL]

Hi !

I bought two Apistogramma cacatuoides, dwarf cichlid rams five days ago. I have very hard water and 7.5 pH .

How hard is the water?

pH 7.5 should not present a problem for A.cacatuoides, or did you mean rams?

 

[jamminnewt]

The pet store guy said "Rams" but they look like the picture of A. cacatuoides and someone else has told me that dwarf cichlids are commonly called rams. Is there a difference? Because everything I've read so far has said that they are one and the same.

I live in Southern California, common tap water hardness in my city is 600ppm. it's like liquid rock, which is why I was trying to bring the tank down with R.O. water.

The sick one isn't even keeping himself vertically alligned anymore. Should I try changing moer water or just continue to pray that he'll pull through?

 

[fishgeek]

the ammonia is the problem

you need no ammonia in your water, how old is your tank setup?
you need to be doing daily water cahnges to reduce the ammonia levels
probably best at 50/50 r/o and tap and maybe as much as 25% of the water daily

make sure you match the water temperature closely and add the water back to the tank relatively slowly

you also should increase the aeration of the water to aid poorly functioning gills